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Liturgy spoke at several levels during a meeting of the International Union of General Superiors here in the last few days. It will take me a while to fully unpack this important gathering. But here's one attempt. Something transformational seemed to have happened today, on this the last day of the five day assembly.

You have to love the way some conservative “thinkers” have a way of fulfilling the caricature of them they claim to loathe. Among the experts assembled by the Washington Post to assess the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court was Edward Whalen, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The Center may be better known to NCR readers due to one of its senior fellows, George Weigel, another “thinker” who constantly steps in his own nonsense.

Whalen, who once clerked for Antonin Scalia, starts with the concern that Kagan lacks judicial experience, a requirement unknown in the Constitution whose strict interpretation Mr. Whelan so much insists upon, and a requirement not met by such justices as Felx Frankfurter, Louis Brandeis and, closer to Whalen’s home, William Rehnquist. I offer a deal: Obama will nominate someone else if all of Rehnquist’s opinions are thrown out.

Jack Skvorak and Frances Grillo are members of two different Catholic parishes, one suburban, one city. Brought together by a shared commitment to Water for Sudan, they teamed up to do something that would expand their faith-communities’ local charitable giving to include a humanitarian cause beyond their immediate area, providing water in the war-torn southern Sudan.

With the help of fellow parishoners, they organized a series of fund-raising activities for Water for Sudan. As Frances says, “It was almost effortless!” Through a number of small, easy-to-do, and imaginative efforts the parish partners in faith raised over $17,000. That kind of partnership demonstrates, as the saying goes, how to “think globally and act locally.”

tChristianity’s love-hate relationship with secularism is a core theme of Benedict XVI’s four-day trip to Portugal, and this evening he asked an especially evocative question: In a social context in which basic Christian belief can’t be taken for granted, is the church too worried about structures and power and not enough about the fundamentals of the faith?

tThe pope raised that query, without quite supplying an answer, during an open-air Mass for an estimated 80,000 people in Lisbon’s Palace Square. It’s certainly an evocative spot to contemplate the demise of Europe’s once-intact Catholic cultures: It was here in 1908 that the penultimate Catholic monarch of Portugal, Charles I, was assassinated in 1908, with the erection of a secular republic not far behind.

My 23-year-old cousin from Italy has been staying with us for three months. A lot of things have surprised him about Los Angeles -- the wide streets, old buildings that were only built forty years ago, and that fact that people actually fill the churches around here.

My cousin is a business graduate student back at home, and is staying with us while doing a corporate internship in town for his master's thesis. He's gone to Disneyland and downtown, to Hollywood and Malibu -- but our local parish has made a real impression.

Perhaps a trace of reality is beginning to insinuate itself into the hierarchy’s understanding of the clergy sex abuse scandal. Although it took him sometime to get to the point, Pope Benedict XVI, in a plane on the way to Portugal, described the crisis as “terrifying” and further stated unequivocally that the problem did not originate with sources outside the church or with the media but within the Catholic community.

A few days before, as John Allen notes here, Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, in a clear breach of hierarchical protocol, directly accused another cardinal, Angelo Sodano, the secretary of state or number two figure in the Vatican, under Pope John Paul II, of complicity in covering up sex abuse allegations against the late Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer of Vienna. Schonborn told a news conference that Sodano had blocked an earlier investigation of Groer.

tFacing the “plurality of value systems and ethical outlooks” associated with secularism, Pope Benedict XVI today urged Portuguese Christians to embrace the “nucleus” of their faith. The pontiff also hinted they should expect blowback, calling Christians to be ready for “the radical choice of martyrdom.”

tBenedict hailed the secular separation of church and state for “opening up a new area of freedom for the church,” but also warned that the ethical pluralism can sow confusion about “the human meaning of life” and also “marginalize” the public role of religious faith.

“The presence of secularism is something normal, but a separation of cult from life, a separation of secularism from cult and faith, is anomalous and must be overcome,” Benedict said. “The great challenge is for the two to meet and to discover their true identity … this, as I said, is a mission for Europe and a human necessity in our time.”

Consider for a moment how the leadership of the world’s women religious, brought together under the aegis of the International Union of General Superiors (UISG), operates.

Looking for a theme for its 2010 conference, the UISG staff decided to survey the ideas of its membership, the women themsleves. They asked for ideas. What the staff received – and they report, “overwhelmingly,” – was the twin theme of "mysticism and prophecy," the simple idea of examining the interior spirit before determing how they were being called to live and act in the world. Or, as many put it, "two sides of the same coin."

tEn route to a May 11-14 visit to Portugal, Benedict XVI called the reality of the sexual abuse crisis “terrifying” and said that the greatest persecution of the church comes not from external attacks but from sin within the church.

Benedict's insistence that the real problem is internal seemed to distance the pope from other senior Vatican officials, who in recent weeks have blamed the media and other parties for unjust criticism of the Catholic church.

tWhile those comments came in response to a question, the questions were submitted to the Vatican by reporters covering the trip several days in advance – suggesting that Benedict wanted to address the crisis and chose his words carefully, rather than being caught off guard.

tBenedict also said that while forgiveness must be part of the church’s response to the crisis, that must not come at the expense of justice.

In total, the pope’s session with the press this morning lasted approximately 16 minutes. Beyond the sexual abuse crisis, Benedict also touched upon the relationship between secularism and religious faith as well as Europe's current economic turmoil.